Re: Why was Earth a fiery hell 55 million years ago?

[Dora Smith <villandra@austin.rr.com>]

Thanks.  That is a good explanation.

Volcanoes are completely missing.   Any logical explanation is almost 
completely missing - events are described but hypothesized to have caused 
themselves.   And how would the coal beds have massively caught fire? 
Does the odd carbon isotope suggest anything about its origins?    It does 
put the event in perspective, however.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png; did it 
really get as warm again during the middle of the Eocene?

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
tiggernut24@yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>
To: <villandra@austin.rr.com>
Cc: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 7:45 AM
Subject: Re: Why was Earth a fiery hell 55 million years ago?


> They are talking about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximums (PETM), a
> massive but very short term spike in temperature triggered by a massive
> release of greenhouse gasses (most likely marine methane) triggered by...
> Um...  Okay, there is not yet a strong candidate for the actual trigger:
> some prefer an impactor, others for terrestrial causes.
>
> A brief wiki-review is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETM
>
> Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
> Office: Centreville 1216
> Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
> Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
> Fax: 301-314-9661


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